


Psalms Chapter Eight Verse Two

by finch (afinch)



Category: 14th Century CE RPF
Genre: Character of Faith, Poetic, Requiem, Rites and Rituals, Roman Catholicism, Untranslated Latin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-10 13:57:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8919790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afinch/pseuds/finch
Summary: People forget that places have history, caught and trapped and whispering to be free. People forget that walls see everything, walls remember everything. People forget that ground has been hallowed long before God has known them. Wawel Cathedral has history, has walls, has hallowed ground. Oh, the rejoicing with Wojtyla Pope, and Stanislaus and Wenceslaus Sainted. Have they forgotten that lying beneath the Cathedral, for far too many years, and far too young, is the little girl named after a Pope? These walls remember, and they bear witness to all that came after, when it seemed that faiths could unite in a tragedy and stop further wars …





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Daegaer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Daegaer/gifts).



> The prayers are in Latin, and are untranslated. Thanks to Arithanas and Madam Hardy for the betas and and thanks to Mari for helping sort out the prayers as well as the rites and rituals.

People forget that places have history, caught and trapped and whispering to be free. People forget that walls see everything, walls remember everything. People forget that ground has been hallowed long before God has known them. Wawel Cathedral has history, has walls, has hallowed ground. Oh, the rejoicing with Wojtyla Pope, and Stanislaus and Wenceslaus Sainted. Have they forgotten that lying beneath the Cathedral, for far too many years, and far too young, is the little girl named after a Pope? These walls remember, and they bear witness to all that came after, when it seemed that faiths could unite in a tragedy and stop further wars …

The babe was sickly from the start, blue and with barely a breath. The priest was outside the room, waiting, and performed the baptism immediately when called; they would not chance Limbo, where Christ everlasting would not - and could not - reach. Jadwiga, weak and dying from the torture of the labor, demanded the child be further blessed in the House of God, and the blue babe, now struggling to cry, was taken from the castle, across Wawel Hill, to Wawel Cathedral. She breathed into the walls, and they reached for her. Already they wanted to claim her. She was given official rights, not the hasty blessing of her birth, held by a nursemaid, her father Wladyslaw only murmuring quietly when prompted.

"Elze," he said, then shook his head. "Elżbieta Bonifacja." A worldly name. A Godly name. Perhaps God would bestow on her His blessing and let her live. Perhaps, but perhaps not. What Wawel Cathedral saw, what no one else had, was Władysław slipping back to the faith of Jogaila and imploring the pagan gods to let Elze live. Perhaps God did not take kindly to a desperate lack of faith; perhaps He would have interceded had Wladyslaw remembered his young wife in his prayers. But Wladyslaw wanted power, and an heir legitimized his throne far more than a continued marriage to a likely-barren wife.

Cruel? Yes, but such are the hearts of humanity.

Vytautas visited next, quietly, not so sure in his faith to think he was welcome at Wawel. He prayed sincerely, from the heart, that the little girl might live, that her mother might live also. He wept for a loneliness he did not know he possessed; he wept for want of a better faith.  Wladyslaw joined him, and they sat, in their quiet prayer, until Vytautas could not bear the silence. "Oh Dominus!" he exclaimed, and then began to pray. " _Pater noster qui es in coelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum ..._ "

But God did not respond. Wawel took in the words, placed them among the stones so that any who followed after would hear the echoes and be moved.

The babe, who had come to the basin of Wawel moments after her birth, and then returned in desperate hope to her mother, now returned to it, just three weeks later, in the moments of her death. Her breath was shallow, almost imperceptible. She was laid at the foot of the sparse altar in a lavish crib:a crown hung at the head, and trinkets intended to celebrate her birth lined the foot. Jadwiga, still alive, but only just, had said her last farewells and sent the babe to God. Wladyslaw prayed to any of the gods for a miracle; he offered penance and peace with the Knights to any deity who would deign to listen. Without Elze to further legitimize him, he could lose the crown. Vytautas prayed on unshaky faith for the divine to intervene.

But God did not respond to requests for a miracle. Quietly, and with only God and the walls of Wawel knowing the exact moment, Elze exhaled her last.

All hopes for a miracle turned to Jadwiga, who was weak, but a fighter. They moved her too, to the altar, where Divine Grace flowed more freely. Jadwiga remained proud and strong, even as she lay bleeding and broken. _Pater noster qui es in coelis_ she prayed, but not with the desperation of Vytautus. Her prayer was quiet, determined; her faith had never wavered before, and it did not waver now with the death of her child. She was stronger through her sorrow, bolder. She told Wladyslaw what to do to keep his throne, to keep Poland strong. She was younger than her husband and co-ruler, but so much wiser. She told him to make his peace with Konrad, to keep death at bay. "There is so much blood already spilt," she said. "God will see. God will overlook. God will understand."

If there were any miracles inside these walls, it was Konrad's coming the next day to pay his respects to those whom, in any other setting, he might have called friends. " _Ex ore infantium et lactantium perfecisti laudem propter inimicos tuos ut destruas inimicum et ultorem_ ," he prayed softly inside the silver crib, to a child who did not stir. Jadwiga shifted to see who was praying Psalms over her dead child, and for moment, her face brightened.

"Be kind to them," she implored him. "There is so much blood already spilt."

"My lady, that we could keep your guidance," Konrad said quietly, taking her hand. "They are stubborn kings and you tame them." He said nothing else, then, simply held her hand and let the stones of Wawel steal her breaths. It would be hours before the silence was broken.

"Pray with me," Jadwiga said, faintly, and Konrad obliged, moving to kneel next to her. "Pray for Elza," she said. " _Pie Iesu Domine, dona eis - dona eis_ …" she was weak, and she knew the words in her mind, but had not the strength to speak.

" _Pie Iesu Domine, dona eis requiem sempiternam,_ " Konrad prayed softly.

Those were to be her last words, said holding the hand of a friend who had prayed for her dead daughter, who had never questioned her faith, and who could, if he allowed himself to overlook his pride, find peace with the country she had ruled.

Perhaps because of  the debt he felt was owed to Jadwiga's final plea, Konrad remained in Wawel during the weeks leading to the funerals. He was not granted access to the castle, but as a man of faith, he did not need to be; all he needed was contained within the walls of Wawel Cathedral. He tried to divine from within those walls his own grace and a path of where to go next. If nothing else, the little one's death weighed heavily upon his soul. In holding that death and Jadwiga's final plea close, he thought that here in these walls, God might provide him an answer.

He did not search alone; Vytautas stayed as well, likewise searching for grace inside the walls of Wawel. The people would come to call him "Great", they would come to revere him as one does a Saint, but Vytautas did not know that. He stood at a crossroads, not dissimilar to Konrad's, and hoped that from his grief, God could find a way forward.

Wladyslaw too, came to Wawel Cathedral, quietly murmuring so his comrades could not hear him.  The walls could. He prayed to God, he railed against God, he begged his gods for an answer. He was struggling with two faiths, one, the faith of his childhood that had provided much comfort, and the other that offered comfort in the promise of life everlasting. For days he murmured, and he was given space to do so. He wondered about his Kingdom, and how to hold on to it; he wondered if he would ever be granted a surviving child.

Even in tragedy, humans can be selfish.

The funerals were short, though well-attended. Wawel embraced not only the love of a Queen, but that of the Would-Be-Queen; at three weeks old, she'd been loved to fill several lifetimes. The priest ended the introit, " _Requiem aeternam dona eis Domine; et lux perpetua luceat eis,_ " and Wladyslaw followed with " _Amen_ ". Beside him, came the unsure echo of Vytautas, and from behind him, Konrad's deep conviction. Sorrow filled him during the _Kyrie_ , and he began to sob. Unbidden then, and full of the weight of a faith he had not known he possessed, Wladyslaw began the _Dies Irae_ , and soon after, his cousin, and his almost-friend, joined him. They were, for a moment, unified in a display of faith, unified in the Latin that bound them.

If only time had suspended that moment, when three men came together in their grief and prayer. It seemed, for a slice of time, that the future could hold peace, that these three could find a way beyond the pasts that had defined them, and bind themselves to a dying plea.

One by one the men stepped through the arches out of Wawel and what had been briefly gained was lost on the wind; only in Wawel had it been possible.

But She remembers what people have forgotten; the history of her walls.

  



End file.
